The Golden Leopard by Lynn Kerstan

intention of being sucked back into the family quagmire. Escaping had been hard enough. They all had to pay for the choices they had made, didn’t they? And she had troubles enough of her own.
    She heard the door open and looked up in time to see Mariah vanish into the passageway. Another quietly desperate retreat, like all the others she had made. The door closed gently, the latch falling into place with scarcely a sound.
    Rather sure she had just failed her sister in some unnameable way, Jessica crawled up the bed until her head reached the pillow and let herself drop like a stone.

Chapter 4
     
    Three days passed before Jessica received news of the auction.
    She had just returned from a morning walk when she saw the letter, several pages thick, on a salver in the entrance hall. Snatching it up, she rushed to her bedchamber—the only place in the house where she could be assured of privacy—and broke the seal with trembling fingers.
    For a moment she could not bear to look. Putting aside Helena’s letter, she spread the other sheets of paper side by side on her writing table and drew up a chair. Her secretary, in neat, precise handwriting, had dutifully recorded each item on offer, the price paid, the buyer, and a breakdown of the commissions due to Christie’s and to Lady Jessica.
    Taking a deep breath, she began to read.
    By the time she had reached the last page, she was making small sounds of excitement. And when she saw the amounts bid for Lady Erskine’s Elizabethan platter and Florentine chest, she let out a whoop of glee.
    Every single item had been purchased, and at a price considerably higher than she had anticipated. Higher even than she had allowed herself to hope for. Jumping to her feet, she scooped up the gray cat that had wandered in through the door she’d forgot to close and danced the startled creature around the room. “I’m a success, Oscar! A roaring great goddess of a success!”
    The cat clung to her shoulder with extended claws, ears flattened and tail swishing in protest.
    She came to a stop and lowered him onto the bed. “Sorry, old lad. It’s just that I have no one else to celebrate with.”
    No one to tell, either, not anyone who would understand what it meant to her. It was a lonely triumph, to be shared only with a cat that had little affection for her. Oscar had simply decided that her room was the safest place to hide out. Two score of men were now in residence at High Tor, and there were few places a cat could go without being stepped on by a careless booted foot.
    She wandered back to the writing table and picked up her secretary’s letter. It began with an apology. Helena had caught a summer cold and would not join her until it had passed. Jessica was sorry to hear it. She had counted on leaving High Tor as soon as Helena arrived with the bank drafts, intending to deliver at least one of them in person. Lady Erskine was in need of the money, and Jessica had planned to evaluate the contents of her home and help her choose what she could bear to part with for a future sale. The remote Northumberland estate would be an excellent place to reside for a few weeks. Like Oscar, she required a safe place to go to ground.
    The thought of it filled her with self-loathing. Above all things she hated weakness, most especially in herself. She feared it, too. People who thought they knew her would be amazed to discover how constantly, how profoundly, she lived in fear of what she might do. Of what she had done. Of what she might become.
    She stomped her feet, one after the other—her way of exorcizing her demons. One, two. One, two. One, two! Oscar rumbled a growl and dove under the bed.
    No one—not even a cat—could bear her company for very long.
    She drew a few steadying breaths and returned to Helena’s letter. The auction was described with just the sort of particulars her secretary knew she would relish. She read the long middle section twice, imagining Lord Stevesbury’s